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Research Tools: New Database from NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management Provides Provides City-Level Figures on Murder Rates in More Than 80 of the 100 Largest U.S. Cities

Violence has fallen in nearly all major U.S. cities since 1991, according to a new analysis by researchers at New York University. However, recent fluctuations in violence in selected cities point to temporary disruptions in this 17-year decline.

“American cities are much safer than they were in the early 1990s,” explains Patrick Sharkey, a New York University sociologist who led the study. “While violence rose in many cities from 2014 to 2017, the most recent data indicate that, overall, cities have turned a corner and this recent rise in violence may have come to an end.”

The study was conducted using crime statistics gathered by AmericanViolence.org, a newly launched project whose database will serve as a public resource. It makes data on violence–specifically, murder rates–accessible to public officials, journalists, researchers, and the public, allowing users to visualize and analyze trends in violence at multiple geographic levels (neighborhoods and cities) and over different time frames (month to month, year to year, decade to decade).

AmericanViolence.org currently provides city-level figures on murder rates in more than 80 of the 100 largest U.S. cities. The updated version of the site, which will launch this fall, will feature neighborhood-level figures on violent crime in 30-50 cities with available data.

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.